A publisher of online content (e.g., a social network system) may provide advertisers with the ability to integrate advertisements with the online content. For example, the publisher may allow the advertiser to create an advertising campaign. An advertising campaign may include an advertisement and one or more advertisement variations, each of which may include one or more of a headline, description, or image. Additionally, the advertisement may be associated with a link (e.g., a URL) to a web page. Thus, when a member of the social networking service clicks on the advertisement, the member may be directed to the web page. An advertising campaign may also be associated with a desired audience (e.g., based on demographic or other information known about members of the social network system) and information about how the advertiser agrees to compensate the publisher to promote the advertisement.
An advertiser may choose to compensate the publisher using one or more of a variety of methods, such as the cost-per-mille (CPM) method or the cost-per-click (CPC) method. With the CPM method, advertisers may pay for every thousand impressions of the advertisement. Although the precise definition of an impression may vary between publishers, an impression is generally considered to be a display of the advertisement to a potential customer. With the CPC method, advertisers may pay each time a member clicks on the advertisement.
Additionally the campaign may be associated with a bid amount. The bid amount may indicate a maximum amount the advertiser is willing to pay when a member clicks on the advertisement (for CPC advertising campaigns) or a maximum amount the advertiser is willing to pay for every 1,000 impressions of the advertisement (for CPM advertising campaigns). When a member requests access to a content page served by the publishing system of the publisher, a real-time auction for each advertising slot on the content page may be triggered. The advertising campaign that wins the auction (e.g., based on its bid) may have an advertisement allocated for the advertising slot. Then, when the content page is served to the member, the advertisement is displayed in the advertising slot to the member.